Cars still hold No. 1 spot for getting around in SF — and it’s getting worse

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Despite millions of dollars spent on new bike lanes and other transit improvements, people still favor cars when it comes to commuting in and around San Francisco, a new report by the city’s Municipal Transportation Agency concludes.

“We can change the roads, but human behavior hasn’t changed since William Shakespeare started writing about it,” quipped SFMTA board member Art Torres.

And people like cars, whether it’s their own or a hire.

Just look at the numbers.

Since the 2008 recession, San Francisco has added 78,000 new residents and more than 175,000 jobs.

While Muni ridership changed with the ups and downs of the economy — it hit a low of 651,000 average weekday boardings in 2007 — last year’s 716,000 weekday boardings were well below the high of 754,000 in 2001.

“I think the big picture is that almost 40,000 more people daily are riding Muni than there were at the end of the 2010 recession,” said Tom Maguire, director of SFMTA’s sustainable streets program.

Photo: Santiago Mejia, The Chronicle

The sign reads "New bus in test No passengers" on a bus at the MUNI Potrero Division yard on Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2018, in San Francisco, Calif.

The sign reads "New bus in test No passengers" on a bus at the MUNI...

As for the current drop in ridership — it was down 10,000 from 2016 to 2017 — Maguire said, “there are more choices out there.”

“Some of them are making the city more congested and some are taking the direction we want the city to be on, which is a greener, uncongested city,” he said.

One of the greener choices, however, is slipping.

Commuting by bike, which surged by 140 percent between 2005 and 2015, has dropped in recent years. The report estimated that bike riders made 16,224 trips to work on a typical weekday in 2017, compared with 21,377 in 2015. The drop corresponds to a similar dip nationally.

It appears, however, the presence of protected bike lanes makes a difference — at least for a while.

“We are seeing increases of over 20 percent on corridors like Folsom Street, where we have added protected bike lanes,” SFMTA spokesman Paul Rose said. Those lanes were added last year. Ridership along the Valencia corridor, however, where streetscape improvements were made in 2010, saw a decrease of 10 percent in the last two years.

There definitely has been growth in another area.

The SFMTA survey found traffic entering San Francisco — primarily from the Bay Bridge — grew by a whopping 27 percent in the past 10 years.

On the home front, vehicle registration per capita has declined by 3 percent in the city, but given the overall population growth the total number of vehicles registered in the city has risen by 6 percent, resulting in 26,000 more vehicles on city streets.

The report found that overall, driving in the city is growing — up 13 percent from 2010 to 2016.

“It’s not just people’s cars, it’s Uber and Lyft and those Google buses that park and back up traffic,” Torres said.

The report estimated that transportation network company vehicles account for half of the congestion increase. The growing population and job market are responsible for the other half.

Put it together and the average peak speeds on both freeways and the bigger, busier streets, such as Geary Boulevard and Mission Street, dropped by 16 percent from 2013 to 2015 and have continued to slow.

Looking forward to 2040, the city is expected to add another 200,000 new residents and 150,000 new jobs — and likely more cars.

And while a growing number of businesses and residents are complaining the new bike- and bus-only lanes are clogging traffic, the city says its studies show that adding the bike and bus lanes has improved traffic flow.

If anything, the SFMTA is doubling down, setting a new goal for 80 percent of all trips in the city to be by sustainable mode — buses, bikes and even shoe leather — by 2030.

We’ll see.

Photo: Richard Vogel, Associated Press

FILE - In this Dec. 27, 2018 file photo a grower at Loving Kindness Farms attends to a crop of young marijuana plants in Gardena, Calif. A group of Democratic state lawmakers are proposing major tax cuts for the marijuana industry to jump-start's California's sluggish legal marketplace. The bill Assemblyman Rob Bonta of Oakland and others introduced Monday, Jan. 28, 2019 would for the next three years eliminate the state's $148 per pound cultivation tax and reduce the state's 15 percent excise tax on retail sales to 11 percent. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File)

Pot bust: California’s high cash expectations from recreational marijuana are going up in smoke as most people are opting to buy their weed on the cheaper, more available and tax-free black market.

“We projected bringing in $185 million in taxes in (fiscal) 2018,” state Treasurer Fiona Ma said. “We got less than half of that.”

To give the legal market a boost, Ma is joining other lawmakers in supporting AB286 by Democratic Assemblyman Rob Bonta of Oakland to cut the current 15 percent excise tax on pot down to 11 percent. The bill would also suspend the tax of $143 per pound paid by growers for three years.

“Lowering a tax rate to bring in more money might sound counterintuitive, but as they found in Washington state, if you drop the tax, more people will buy more legally so revenue will go up,” Bonta said.

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The Fitch credit rating agency estimated that when local taxes are included, the cumulative tax rate can be as high as 45 percent, so a $100 purchase winds up costing $145.

The fact sheet accompanying the tax cut cites a report by sales-tracking company GreenEdge that found California sales of legal marijuana have dropped by $500 million since 2017, when only medical — not recreational — cannabis was legal.

The fact sheet also states that the majority of California cannabis consumers are buying their buds and edibles on the cheaper untaxed market.

John Oram, whose company, NUG, handles cannabis from seed to sale, said high taxes are just part of the problem. Difficult local permitting processes have also shut out many legal retailers, he said.

“You don’t see it so much in the Bay Area, but it is a real problem in Southern California,” Oram said.

Taxing cannabis and ending the black market were big selling points in the campaign to pass Proposition 64, which made recreational cannabis legal beginning last year. The question is: Will high taxes wind up strangling the golden goose that voters were promised?

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Phillip Matier appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX-TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call 415-777-8815, or email pmatier@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @philmatier